i the u.s. and the u.n. have imposed numerous sanctions against iran and their ability to sell oil around the globe but a new report says american officials in afghanistan fail to verify that the fuel purchased for afghan security forces didn't come from iran is this yet another case of u.s. hypocrisy. and it's hillary clinton's last day as u.s. secretary of state choose to travel the world on numerous diplomatic missions but as she leaves her post with great fanfare does the hype match her record that's a question we'll ask coming up and from immigration to health care the u.s. is facing serious problems but can a government that's deeply divided along party lines actually solve these problems shines a light on some of the issues that's created a broken us system. it's

friday february first four pm in washington d.c. hi meghan lopez and you're watching our t.v. . beginning this hour with the topic of the middle east and more specifically the continued redevelopment of afghanistan a new report out this month found that american officials could have been unknowingly buying fuel from iran for years despite numerous sanctions strictly prohibited such a purchase the report found that the u.s. failed to verify the source of fuel they purchased for afghan security forces due to a lack of oversight by the department of defense so how much fuel are we talking about here well between two thousand and seven and two thousand and twelve about one billion one point one billion dollars worth so how does this happen and what does this say about u.s. sanctions in iran well the answer that more jamaal policy director with the national iranian american council joins me in studio for more thank you for joining . jamal let me start off by asking you should we really be surprised that the fuel

for these afghan security forces is really coming possibly coming from iran you know i don't i don't know that it comes as too much of a surprise no matter how much you isolate iran canonically the fact of the matter is iran is going to remain on the physical border of afghanistan it's not going away and so when you have you know tens of thousands of troops amassed there there is a potential that you can end up relying on iran for certain goods certain energy resources so i don't think this is a surprise it's one we've actually seen before in i think december november of last year it actually was revealed that the pentagon has depended on iran for antivenom in snake venom. medicine for troops and there was this it was revealed sort of became a controversy that ok potentially we're also violating our own same sions in order to treat wounds that u.s. troops experience in afghanistan because of snakebites and again what do you do

about that you know your own is right there and they're the chief producer of this so do you cut them off is that in u.s. interest to be doing the raise a lot of questions about the sanctions policy and the ramifications for for u.s. interests but let's talk about that for a minute because obviously as you mentioned iran and afghanistan are close and afghanistan actually gets the majority of its oil from iran i think it's third to a half was the latest estimates of this but obviously the u.s. is trying to draw down its presence in afghanistan so can we really expect the u.s. to both draw down its presence in afghanistan and also monitor the sanctions that are going on there so stringently. it's going to be incredibly difficult and i think that this underlies the fact that the u.s. and iran do share a lot of interests when it comes to the future of afghanistan in terms of the stability. of the country you know the economic stability preventing the country

for being taken over once again by the taliban which you know has for a long time ben an enemy of iran and so there are all these sort of converging interests and these potential fault lines where these interests can be undermined because of the confrontation between the u.s. and iran i think it's very unrealistic to think that the u.s. is going to be able to leave afghanistan and simultaneously be continuing its policy of you know crippling iran economically and trying to contain it economically when it is such a sort of important integrated part of that area of the world well let's talk about how integrated they are i mean we had the twenty thirteen national defense authorization act that was just authorized recently and they had some of the harshest sanctions against iran but there was an explicit exception and i do want to say this reconstruction assistance and economic development for afghanistan when

it comes to iranian fuel purchases says that basically the president can agree to these iranian fuel purchases if it's in u.s. national interests so is this undermining the sanctions altogether saying that if it's in u.s. interests we don't have to abide by those sanctions at all or are we kind of in this quagmire where it's either get iran's assistance with this fuel are don't leave afghanistan you know i think that it is a it is a tough needle to thread there and what we need to remember is that the same sions are supposed to be. protecting u.s. national security interests the problem is that we have lost sight of what those sanctions are supposed to achieve the same as have become sort of an interest unto themselves we've lost sight of the fact that sanctions are supposed to be sort of a tactical form of getting leverage over iran that is the use of the negotiate.

table to try to carve out a deal to try to you know have something to offer and give and take and they've become a strategic objective unto themselves we had the hearing yesterday with chuck hagel being considered for secretary of defense and you want to have this cheerleading of the sanctions as if they're sacrosanct as if they're this amazing policy that have done so many good things for us when in reality if you look at the last ten years of. u.s. policy on iran we haven't actually achieved a whole lot we've done a lot of things in terms of we can in iran's economy and sort of ratcheting up the pressure but iran centrifuges are still still spinning we're on the precipice of a war and now with afghanistan we're facing these really tough questions about can we continue to be enemies with iran and not engaging with iran while we're trying to leave afghanistan in some sort of stable fashion well i think the other question that remains to be answered is really what the u.s. envisions for afghanistan and more importantly what afghanistan in vision is for

afghanistan in the future meaning that obviously you know afghanistan asserts that it's going to be completely independent of the u.s. so do is america i guess for saying afghanistan's hand and having the same kind of sanctions the same kind of harsh rhetoric versus iran that the u.s. has doesn't make sense yeah it's that's a problem that the u.s. is also you know facing with iraq as well and you have you have these areas where there are natural shared interests between the u.s. and iran but because of this standoff between the countries yet you're having the u.s. trying to tell you know tell it tell iraqis to not be allies with the iranians or telling the afghans to not be economically involved with iran and that's just that's frankly impossible that b. you know nobody's going to come here and tell the united states to not be economically. with canada or mexico and so we frankly we can expect the same thing

of of countries that we have invaded are now leaving and so you know this is frankly it's an opportunity for engaging iran and finding those areas of shared interest and the iranians are not being good themselves on this issue either you know they have rejected by a lot of talks on this issue but i think that this is one of the few areas where we actually have seen in the past you know in two thousand and one and in the aftermath of the invasion we did see productive negotiations between the u.s. and iran where they actually were working together. to achieve those shared interests that has now been significantly undermined and is not currently on the table but i think it's something that's worth exploring as we figure out a way to sort of crack this nut that we're facing with regard to that entire that entire area so you're arguing that just because we disagree with the nuclear program proliferation of iran that there's other areas that we can work on together

in order to both warm up the relationship with iran as well as solve some of the issues that we're currently facing in the middle east and part of that is just the fact that where not in the middle east you know we have outside our kind of perspective and they have a very much insider perspective but let me ask you this i mean on the other hand you know it is american money that is going into this fuel and everything we're not saying that all of afghanistan has to buy only you know russian our other fuel we're saying that they cannot buy it for afghan forces or for nato forces so isn't that fair to say considering that it is after all our money well we're saying that not just afghanistan we've said that the the entire world that if you buy. in oil energy products we are going to sanction you we're we're going to lock you out of the u.s. financial system which really means you are on your own as far as the global economic system. those are extraterritorial sanctions and those are sanctions that

we have imposed on the entire world now. you know president obama has worked at the un and has worked with the europeans and so there are now these multilateral sanctions in place but the reality is that the majority of our sanctions are the u.s. telling our allies what they can and cannot do regarding iran and when it comes to you know china india or you know afghanistan and iraq we may reach a point where those countries are no longer willing to sort of toe the line and go against their own interests in order to adhere to a sanctions policy that increasingly doesn't look like it's actually aimed at resolving the nuclear issue but looks at sort of this looks like this sort of long term. containment policy designed to turn iran economically into another you know north korea. policy director for the national iranian american council thank you so much for joining us thank you. still ahead here on our t.v.

today hillary clinton serves her last day has secretary of state coming up we'll take a look at her tenure as america's top diplomat and examine her legacy. let me let me i want to know will let me ask you a question. here on this network is what we're having a debate we have our knives out. to do this right space thing there's again here in this story we're being racist talk about the surveillance me.

moving on to turkey to now two people are dead after a suicide bomber attacked an american embassy and carra a turkish guard and the visiting turkish journalist were the victims the obama administration has now called this an act of terror turkey's interior minister says that the bomber was a known member of the leftist radical group known as the revolutionary people's liberation party front he went on to say that the motive may have been different then motives of as militants now this comes on the same day that hillary clinton steps down from her post as secretary of state and just days after the contentious

capitol hill hearings dealing with the attack on the u.s. consulate in benghazi secretary clinton was largely loud for her democrat by her democratic colleagues for boosting america's image abroad particularly in the middle east president obama took his praise of clinton one step further i think hillary will go down as one of the flight of searchers states we've had. but if you look at the most recent polls the u.s. is still largely seen an unfavorable light in the muslim world so today on her last day in the obama administration let's spend some time to examine hillary clinton's legacy and that the legacy of the u.s. in the muslim world to do that i'm joined by dr webster tarpley he's a author and historian mr tarpley welcome thank you so first let's start by talking about her or her legacy and what that what does she accomplish i think or record is one of the most dismal of modern times maybe catastrophic would be would be a term for this the reset with russia that she did so much is dissolved into

animosity the u.s. is pushing nato anti-ballistic missiles right up to the border of russia the so-called pivot towards china and asia is interpreted i think correctly by the chinese as an attempt to encircle them trying to take countries like burma and turn them into u.s. puppets where they have been friendly to china latin america u.s. influence is probably at an all time low if we look a little bit more specifically into the areas so the middle east to the greater middle east afghanistan she supported the surge what has that led to just a lot more losses they wanted of course to export the civil war into pakistan she hasn't been able to do serious harm to pakistan but i think it's when you get to libya and syria you see the real dimensions of her of her malfeasance here we have the united states in order to maintain influence and control reduced to the level of destroying nations and indeed destroying the fabric of human civilization

itself because she knew and she had absolute you know good reports from embassador forward and ambassador stevens who were doing these things that the the guerrillas the terrorists the al qaeda death squads that she was sending in to overthrow gadhafi and providing them with air cover and similarly the groups that she has urged on to attack syria. these people essentially mean chaos and the end of civilization is these places have known it ok so let's pass a conversation there you obviously brought up a lot a lot of information but i do want to bring up poll numbers really quickly dealing with the u.s. middle east added to the of the u.s. recently if we can go ahead and bring us up obviously you see that a lot of people a lot of these countries are seeing the u.s. in an unfavorable light pakistan right now is eighty percent unfavorable and that went down obviously pretty dramatically after the u.s. went in and killed osama bin ladin so looking at these these statistics the u.s.

being so unfavorable among so many of these countries i have to ask you i mean does it all come down to hillary clinton and her decisions or or or was it more of a broader obama administration approach of course the it's the new obama approach which it's an attempt to deemphasize conventional military operations with heavy divisions but to use. cyber warfare economic sanctions economic warfare drones drone assassinations assassinations on the ground color revolutions and then this dimension that it is very open and very blatant after nine eleven to go back to using al-qaeda the way it was used in afghanistan as an open tool of the united states let me also point out the fundamental weakness of hillary clinton she always believes that as a woman she's got to be the biggest warmonger in the room she's got to be the most aggressive and if she's not she goes into an identity crisis now this unfortunately

is the definition of weakness that you're so afraid of what you might do that you have to compensate and that's that's what she does that mean she care exercise any judgment as president she would be the tool of unscrupulous advisers and the one who was most bellicose and aggressive is the one that you would listen some let me stop you there because you did just say that that is the tool of the united states . sure you care to elaborate on that i mean that's a sheriff various actions she said at the other day hillary clinton in her testimony the previous week said al qaeda was created by the united states as a tool against the soviet union in afghanistan yes absolutely everybody knows that that's written on the walls during the nine eleven phase with bin laden and all the rest of this this was somewhat obscured but now it's out in the open the u.s. wants well hodge these people to take over libya and the group which they admit is a terrorist group they want that to become the government of syria but what you're saying is something that happened in the one nine hundred eighty s.

versus versus the al kind of today do you still believe that al qaeda that never existed at the people involved in this are going around them in take robert gates who was very of defense until the day before yesterday he was part of this operation in the pentagon today you still have somebody in the top five or six michael vickers in the department who actually participated in creating al qaeda it's the cia arab legion but at the same time those who have been gone for over a year because i think it's still there. i'm going to present it to happen and gates well i was i was panetta gates of course but he was he's been there and he presided over the beginning of these these operations with libya and so forth but but take michael vickers anyway the other interesting point is with the state department and we get down to the level of sort of technical failures the visa for mood talab the christmas day bomber over detroit if his visa had been told he could not have boarded that plane he couldn't have gotten onto the plane for the united

states and the state department are the ones who failed to do that so if we look at her record it's a story of failure on multiple points and nevertheless this is balanced by this amazing complacency this amazing sense of entitlement that somehow she's going to be coronated the next president i don't think so website are you saying that the state department actually wanted these people to come and set their country and i. and wreck havoc we what i'm saying is that that should have been fully and openly investigated and it did come out in a hearing but then they immediately went into executive session and got themselves together to quiet it down so. she's also targeted because she's been in one hundred fifteen countries is big news brzezinski once said that's nothing their travel agents have been in one hundred ninety countries ok let's turn back to this this libyan conflict is i want to bring up a point that you brought up earlier you said that the u.s. really charged its way into libya what we do know is that that president obama and hillary clinton have their differences as much as we want to say they're on the

same page they're just not completely hillary clinton is more of a in your face kind of person we do know that considering how she had to convince the obama administration to agree to the libyan kind of no fly zone and things like that at the same time though it was the libyan people that were asking for this no fly zone so can we really can we really say and also i can point to the somali not the mali and then the african union were the ones that were asking for the french to intervene so can we really not healthy people if they are the ones that are asking that we limit ourselves to libya because this is the one that i think best known this was a call coming from that benghazi rebel council and what did they turn out to be they turned out to be the libyan islamic fighting group and various people arrayed around them in various more presentable frontmen the libyan national council this was a call issued by essentially a group of western agents demanding that nato came come in the french took it up

that's also part of the policy is let other people get out in front let france get out in front with libya let turkey get out in front with syria that hurts those other so-called allies and allows the u.s. to stay stay in the background but that was an exercise in imperialism there was a treaty between the british and the french signed the year before that they were going to invade. a large country in north north africa and that was libya so that was that was a cynical exercise in overthrowing this government now now that gadhafi is gone there's hell turned into chaos and we see it in niger in mali in charge in all these other places you can see what gaddafi meant to that area this was also planned and now algeria is next on the list i think she's her one regret is that she didn't get to overthrow because the sub obviously would have been something she wanted to do once or one point that i really do want to bring up we only have about twenty seconds left is that the u.s. has been using more and more international mechanisms like the united nations

they're really trying to engage the international community so just yes or no answer do you think that that is because or in spite of hillary clinton and it's because of her but it's a policy that grows out of weakness in other words if you could start bombing and invading and go back to the neo cons they would do that but they're forced into this more clever and supple kind of imperialism simply as a matter of weakness also the desire to get other people in the front line get them cut up and chopped up very nicely in about webster tarpley author a historian thank you so much for the vegas area. from afghanistan to cuba. where we're seeing the judge overthrow a second round of pretrial hearings for the nine eleven terror suspects that has ordered the u.s. government to remove the offstage censorship equipment from the court room army

colonel james pols decision to remove the equipment came after the white noise machines were suddenly activated at a pretrial hearing without the consent of the judge earlier this week and happened when the defense attorney mentioned that names of several secret cia prisons overseas where the five defendants were held before they were taken to guantanamo bay it turns out that the unidentified security officials outside of the courtroom could censor the proceedings that the public and the media view on a forty second delay colonel polar went on to say cole went on to say this this is the last time that any party other than the security officer inside the courtroom who works for the military commission will be permitted to unilaterally decided that the broadcast will be suspended after all although only only the judge has the authority to close the courtroom so no one but the courtroom security officer should be pushing the censor button apparently not even colonel hole was aware that the cia had power to censor the hearings without his permission well as you can

imagine this revelation only fueled the defense's case defense lawyers news that incident as evidence in their claims that the tribunal was unfair the defense filed an emergency motion to pause the proceedings until they can determine what this offstage censorship technology what it could actually do what it was used for and whether their controversial. confidential conversations with their clients were actually private so is this a win for transparency well not quite the trial can still be censored and most likely will be just under colonel poll. mandate and not the cia's. all right well the more things change the more they stay the same four years after being elected president obama faces many of the same challenges during his second term despite a legislative victory of obamacare many issues for still remain with health care also on the docket immigration which promises an uphill battle within the newly

elected congress artie's adriano who set out takes a look at these issues and asks the questions is the system broken and how can it be fixed the affordable care act was passed nearly three years ago but continues to generate controversy designed to help fix a broken system will confusion and disagreement over its implementation do meant to failure already twenty five governors all of them republican have declined to participate in the insurance exchange program this online exchange was supposed to help americans find the best deals for their health coverage the exchanges aren't the only obstacle this past week reports surface of a possible glitch in the overall law but it's not corrected would leave many including families uninsured in particular children bruce leslie president of first focus estimates that almost five hundred thousand kids could remain uninsured as a result adding the children's community is disappointed by the administration's

decision to deny access to coverage for children based on a bogus definition of a ford ability. now on to immigration a problem but the president has identified as a big issue looking for a solution listen to him here. because they're doing the same to fix a system that's been broken for way too we'll. and it's breaking the bank too in a time of tightened purse strings the united states spends five point five million dollars a day on immigration detention that's according to the national immigration forum the obama administration has has deported a record number of people more during his first term than president bush and both of his and there are eleven million undocumented people in the country many are looking for an avenue toward citizenship just this past week in the senate the so-called gang of eight came together and released a series of recommendations to serve as a road map for immigration reform seem like a great bipartisan moment when politicians put aside their differences to work towards improving the country but is congress even capable of that anymore and it's

no secret that americans have little confidence in the people they've elected to serve on capitol hill according to public policy polling the picture is a rather bleak fifty six percent of americans prefer being stuck in traffic than dealing with congress in this con didn't exactly have a sterling reputation during this time forty one percent of americans seem to think he's better than those on capitol hill and finally americans seem to consider congress members bigger pests than cockroaches in fact the last congress was so divided that they passed fewer laws than any other american legislature since the one nine hundred forty s. they did not pass a budget they did not pass an agricultural bill and they essentially held the country's finances hostage over the debt ceiling but despite making the history books for all the wrong reasons power in washington and not shook hands during the november elections president is still the same the senate is still democratic and the house is still republican makes it hard to imagine the.